Sun Dog Consulting

MobileMe Backup

Jason — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:42:20 +0000

I was going to write an article awhile ago about this not so well known application. It provided simple, selectable, and scheduled backups to your MobileMe iDisk. But with the upcoming iCloud, which sounds great and no longer a paid service, makes the MobileMe Backup version 3.2 obsolete. Maybe it’ll be updated so simple computer maintenance of additional backups can take place.

If you’re still interested in utilizing the MobileMe Backup you can grab it from Apple’s website here.

Back/Forward Gestures Gone in Mac OS X Lion?

Jason — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:21:46 +0000

Nope, it’s still there. Go into your System Preferences and select Trackpad. Go to the More Gestures section and for the first option, “Swipe between pages“, click the down arrow and select “Swipe with two or three fingers“. Now you’ll be able to use three finger swiping within Finder again.

MacBook Hot after upgrading to OS X Lion

Jason — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:14:07 +0000

To begin with, not to happy about the download only OS X Lion upgrade. Now when I reinstall I have to download 3.5gb to upgrade to Lion. I can understand Apple protecting them from someone buying one DVD and installing on multiple systems, but there are better ways to go about that.

Anyway, if you’re experiencing an overheating Mac system it appears that the new OS requires a complete reindex of your system. This can take awhile to run and will consume a lot of your system resources. If you look at your Activity Monitor you’ll probably see mdworker using anywhere from 5 to 90% of the processor. My reindexing is still going on but my system temperature should drop once the indexing is done (my system temp reached 168 degrees).

Homepage jQuery Slideshow

Jason — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:13:26 +0000

Updating the jQuery Slideshow on my home page so it’ll look a little empty for a few days while I finalize the images. Before I was using images from my portfolio which is kind of redundant.

Create a Password Protected Zip file on Mac OS X

Jason — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:00:51 +0000

Will add more information later, but the command is as follows for a directory (the -r means recursive, so it zips all files in the directory preserving the directory structure too):

zip -re filename.zip dir_name

To zip a single file and password protect it just omit the r in -re

Both commands will prompt for a password and to confirm the password.

Orbital Logo

Jason — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 05:26:51 +0000

I was messing around with fonts in Photoshop and got an idea while looking at the Orbital font. Decided to create a logo with it titled “Orbital Communications” and if you look closely the 6 bars I used, which kind of represents signal strength, was created using the magic wand in Photoshop selecting the empty space between the O, b and a.

I applied some simple Layer Styles, gradient overlay to the background and replaced the dot in the i with a simple, yet cheesy, starburst shape. For a quick idea, and fun, I thought it turned out okay but nothing special.

Kautz 24hr Towing

Jason — Sun, 29 May 2011 00:53:47 +0000

Another simple, single page, website design for a local towing service which provides exclusive beach towing. The customer wanted the site to look like an advertisement they are running in the local newspaper.

Lines and Designs Redesigned Website

Jason — Sun, 29 May 2011 00:23:25 +0000

Redesigned website for Lines and Designs; images and color scheme provided by the owner. The theme design takes advantage of new features found in WordPress 3.1.x.

Additional Hard Drive for Dell PowerEdge 840

Jason — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 01:28:36 +0000

Client called the other day saying his server had run out of room on the hard drive which he stores all of his work files; server is a Dell PowerEdge 840. He wanted a quick solution of mirrored drives so I researched what that system could support then picked up two Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 64MB SATA-3G. Installed it in a matter of minutes but Windows couldn’t find it.

Went into the BIOS and I noticed the SATA port was turned off, turned it on, saved the changes and booted into Windows. Everything was good from there.

Custom Built Gaming Computer

Jason — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:53:15 +0000

Had a customer looking for a new system that would be powerful enough for his son to play games on. They went the Dell route for their last 3 computers but wanted something affordable and would be good enough to handle games for years. Below are the specifications for this system I put together:

ASUS Sabertooth X58 Intel X58 LGA 1366 Motherboard
Intel Core i7-940 2.93GHz 8MB LGA 1366 Processor
Corsair Vengeance 4GB PC13800 DDR3 1600MHz Memory (x2)
ASUS GeForce GTS 450 1GB GDDR5 PCIe DVI/HDMI/VGA Video Board
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA HD 7200/32MB/SATA-6G Hard Drive
Sony Optiarc 24X DVDRW SATA
Ultra X4 750W Modular Power Supply

All contained within an Ultra XBlaster Mid-Tower Black Case running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.